work with us

Legal Services

For day-to-day operations, Sharpe & Abel keeps businesses out of trouble with the following legal services:

A legal perspective on your situation- professional advice: When you want some certainty about which direction to take. An evidence-based perspective of your rights & obligations for your particular situation. Written or oral legal advice.

Align differences of opinion and resolving disputes: When you don’t see eye to eye with a supplier, customer or employee and you want a solution that realigns the relationship and has the force of law behind it.

Contract diagnosis: Understand what you are really committing to- the legal, commercial & operational risks. Ensure you have the specific tools to enforce your rights and the force of the law behind you to deliver your project on time and to budget. You receive a traffic-light coded analysis of your risks so you can make informed decisions easily.

Legal documentation to give you a legal, commercial & operational framework: You know what you need and want a clear framework to make sure your project delivers operationally and financially. You want a documentary framework that has the force of law to support your rights.

Triage for misunderstandings: first aid for businesses in distress.

Our legal services are all governed by the Legal Profession Uniform Law (Victoria).

Strategy Services

Strategy Design & Planning

Sometimes you want the most effective way to get your business out of a sticky situation; other times you need a smarter way to meet your business goals. We get you crystal clear on your objectives and design a strategy to get you the results you need. We can even drive execution.

International Outreach

Looking to expand into overseas markets or start production elsewhere? We scout out the legal, regulatory and governmental landscape for you and can negotiate in key markets.

Regulatory Services

When the long arm of government ties your business up in red tape, we help you untangle it.

Our strategy services are not governed by the Legal Profession Uniform Law (Victoria).

Charging in six-minute increments isn't good for you or us. At Sharpe & Abel, we like to keep our pricing smart and simple.

How We Work

We are lawyers and strategists to people who make and deliver things that matter- we love working with industrial and technical businesses including automation, manufacturing, building services and engineering companies. We like relationships that work well for you and for us, and that generally means a few things:

You are respectful, professional and take your business seriously. But a sense of humour isn't lost on you.

You value accountability and work best with professionals who understand the hard work that goes into earning each dollar.

You understand that for all professional services, there is a trade-off between time, quality and cost and you can choose which is most important for each circumstance.

You understand that as lawyers, our paramount duty is to the court and the administration of justice. We are also duty-bound to act in the best interests of our clients. That means we may sometimes tell you things you may not want to hear. You're open and appreciative of that. We're always respectful, but we never try to sugar coat the message.

At the beginning of each relationship, we take the time to scope out in detail your requirements. We work with you to get this right up front so we both know exactly what to expect. We tell you what we need from you, when we need it and why and help you get the best value from our services. We let you know when your services will be delivered and deliver on time. We don't overcharge and we don't under deliver.

We work magic but not miracles so if you're looking for top-tier quality at bargain basement prices, projects that need to be delivered yesterday or credit terms of 60 days, we aren't the firm for you. Our clients understand that results require intelligent leadership, strategic thinking and a lot of hard work. They give us the time and space to work our magic.

From The Inside

Thanks for making it here. If you’re thinking about working with Sharpe & Abel from the inside, you’ve arrived at the right place.

We’re a small firm and a young one too. We’re not a “leading firm”, we don’t aim to garner lots of industry awards and being part of the “global elite” isn’t part of the plan. We’ll leave that to others.

Just one thing matters to us: delivering legal solutions to our clients’ problems.

You might think that all law firms do that. Here are a few questions to get you thinking:

Do law firms measure whether they solve their clients’ problems?

How do law firms get to understand what their clients’ problems are? How good are you at telling someone what your problem really is?

Can law firms tell how important the work they are doing is to their clients and price accordingly?

So rather than building a firm the traditional way (did anyone see where those clients went?) – we started from a blank canvas. Who do we want to serve? What is really important to them? What role does the law have in their businesses- if any? How do we make sure that the things we know about our clients aren’t just residing in one person’s head? How can we ensure that our clients have access to the law when they need it- and yes, even lawyers need time to look after our families, rest and recreate!?

What we’ve created is a firm built on specific values, that is dedicated to clients and is always learning- from our clients, from each other and from our wider communities.

We want to build long-term relationship with lawyers who share our values and approach. But please don’t email us a CV or a resume with a standard cover letter or call - that takes time away from us serving our clients.

Rather, can we ask you to complete this questionnaire? We’ve designed it to hone in on what’s important to our clients and also to avoid discrimination on the basis of gender, ethnicity or age. You’ll also get a better sense of what we generally look for. We generally get back to people with feedback within a couple of weeks.